


offices of the mexico city wild wings legal team

by krebkrebkreb



Series: the Case files [2]
Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Guilt, Legal Drama, dialogue? don't know her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:40:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28112559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krebkrebkreb/pseuds/krebkrebkreb
Summary: Case Sports was born blind. They have never seen an umpire, a coin, a blaseball set ablaze. After the trial, their dreams are full of the sight of them: splendid, awful.It’s still somehow better than feeling like fog trying its best to linger in the cool places before the heat of sunlight dissolves it away.(A small story from the Shadows.)
Relationships: Case Sports & Fran Beans
Series: the Case files [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2059515
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	offices of the mexico city wild wings legal team

**Author's Note:**

> alternate summary: I have never met a piece of punctuation that I wanted to use correctly

The legal team’s offices are in the shadows.

It’s not something Case really fully understood the details of before they put themself on the roster. Before they were _sent_ to the shadows. 

Everything is a lot more normal before you sign your ILB contract. (Everything is a lot different, after an Election decides your fate.)

  
Kennedy Meh retreats to the shadows... Fran Beans emerges!  
Case Sports retreats to the shadows... Adkins Gwiffin emerges!  
Adkins Gwiffin retreats to the shadows... Brock Watson emerges!

  
For Case, the shadows are chilly in a way they can never escape, chilly in a way it never was before. Things now are... hollow, with fuzzy, unclear edges. Braille is hard to read when the end of one thing and the beginning of the next feels so undefined. Sometimes their fingers slip right through their phone screen like it’s made of nothing but smoke.

Kennedy tells them what the world looks like, mostly using words that mean little to Case. He explains that it’s different—grey and foggy and strangely hollow. Always _dark_ , too. Case understands that at least, understands the absence of sun on their skin and the strange disorienting winds.

(Kennedy turns in paperwork for an office transfer to San Francisco, to go manage his old team. Gwiffin buys Case a case of beer and commiserates with them over crushes long gone to other countries.) (Fran isn’t here anymore in the shadows to commiserate with. That stings more than Kennedy’s departure.)

Case had thought, at the time, that ILB seasons eight and nine were rather difficult without her. Being on the field and knowing that yeah, sure, their best friend was in the lawyer’s box watching everything—but she wasn’t _beside them_. An ILB player isn’t allowed to have a bodyguard, even if that bodyguard is also their best friend. 

Knowing she’s out on the field now instead, knowing now firsthand how harrowing it is to observe, completely helpless, as your favorite person in the world is on the field with the umpire’s eyes on them...

They don’t feel great about putting Fran through that. 

(In the fuzzy, chilly world of the shadows it’s hard to feel great about much. This particular type of not great, the type that’s shaped like Fran and feels like guilt and worry combined, settles deeper and more painfully into Case than not knowing if the things around them are what’s insubstantial, what’s not solid, or if they themself are dissolving away into thin air.)

Time passes. Case isn’t certain if it’s two weeks or two years. Two seasons and 198 Cells Barajas to settle in at the Bucket. A lot of employment paperwork, the backbone of their legal team’s practice. Project Icarus lurches from an idea to a concept to execution.

There is a lot _lot_ of paperwork. And then—

A lawsuit.

When Brief approached them to discuss it, Case didn’t really believe what he was saying. Sue the ILB, the Commissioner himself? Over something like the execution of a decree?

Case tells Brief that it sounds like suicide. Brief just shrugs, a motion that Case hears as the soft whisper of a pinstripe suit sliding over itself.

They’re ready to suggest to the Mills that they withdraw with the suit, worried about the vague and ominous reasons Burke hand urged them to withdraw when the Wild Wings were demanding their name back. Worried about worse than those vague and ominous reasons. 

Worried about their—their _former_ teammates—their _friends_ out on the field.

But Case is a lawyer again. So, they collect preliminary evidence. Put together documents. Submit them: New York Millennials v. Parker MacMillan III and That Coin, Probably.

McBlase and Beans call the office, looking to assist. The Firefighters legal team submits an amicus brief on behalf of the Mills. Holden Milk Legal gets in touch.

The commissioner also gets in touch... via Twitter DMs.

Case doesn’t put up much of a fight when someone suggests they add some more... personal conditions to a settlement.

The settlement isn’t accepted. (Case blames themself for fumbling the negotiations, feels a knot of worry and shame over their selfish and self-centered desire to get back on the field.) Lawyers from Crabs, LLC agree to represent the Commissioner and a court date is set. 

It’s _Sunbeams_ court, so...  
A lot happens.

Case stands tall in front of delivers the opening statement for the prosecution. Ends their statement by saying, “Wire Fraud isn’t punishable by death but if it is it’s Parker’s fault.” People gasp, even _applaud_.

Case is immediately removed from the courtroom by the judge-and-jury for their own safety.

Every lawyer on the defense delivers their opening statement at once.

(A lawyer presenting an unrelated case seen by the judge-and-jury during the recess copies Case’s opening monologue nearly verbatim and they have never been so flattered.)

Feedback swaps a member of the defense team with a member of the prosecution.

An AI goes rogue and gains something resembling sentience.

Interim CEO Commissioner Parker MacMillan III goes up in flames. (Case _really_ doesn’t feel great about this, if their twitter account is any evidence.)

More things go up in flames. The doors barely open in time for the people in the courthouse to make it out alive.

Then, finally, a verdict.

Case is reinstated to the team, just like in the settlement they suggested weeks ago. They feel warm sunlight on their skin; they hug Fran and Brock and Brief and Raf and Beans and McBlase and several Cells outside the burned out shell of the Outback Steakhouse. They try to make sure no one thinks the tears are anything but joyful.

(Parker MacMillan III is found not guilty. This is the only other part of the verdict that Case can think about. This is maybe the only _thing_ that Case can think about for a while.)

They tweet a few things, happy to feel the keyboard solid beneath them. Happy to feel their fingers solid on the keyboard.

While scrolling through their twitter feed—absently following the the Coffee Cup excitement and faking a bit of enthusiasm for anything other than feeling like that lawsuit and trial was potentially the biggest, deadliest mistake of their career—they come across a tweet that doesn’t make sense with their knowledge of how the universe is ordered. How it runs, the fundamental state of things.

The tweet is from a twitter account that in its entirety doesn’t make much more sense: @thegameband.

Some of the preliminary research for this lawsuit, some of the evidence submitted by fans... Together it all leads to some sudden, unwelcome, and frankly terrifying realizations.

The Game Band.   
The developers of Blaseball.  
Blaseball the online video game.  
Blaseball the _simulation._

 _Blaseball, where the money isn’t real and the players aren’t either._ What?

**Author's Note:**

> alternate title: Case Sports tweets at the fourth wall and the fourth wall tweets back.
> 
> Case themself can be found on twitter as @caseblaseball
> 
> I can be found on twitter as @krebshouting, or as Kreb in the main blaseball discord and a collection of Wild Wings associated servers.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
